A Good Jinchuuriki Is Hard to Find
by Kireteiru
Summary: Semi-AU. Naruto rewrite of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" for my English final. Starring Tsunade, Shika, Ino, Kono, Moegi, Gaara, Kankuro, and Temari.


Title: A Good Jinchuuriki Is Hard to Find  
Author: Kireteiru  
Rating: T  
Warnings: character death  
Summary: Semi-AU. Naruto rewrite of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" for my English final. Starring Tsunade, Shika, Ino, Kono, Moegi, Gaara, Kankuro, and Temari.

* * *

In no way, shape, or form did Tsunade want to go to Rice Country. In truth, she would rather have gone to Water Country during the rainy season than head there during the most humid time of the year, as was their plan, but what she really wished they would do is go to visit some of her connections in the Village Hidden in the Hot Springs (and gamble her life away at an especially nice casino there). She was taking advantage of every opportunity to change Shikamaru's mind, though his only response was "It's too troublesome to change plans now, Granny Tsunade; maybe next time."

She'd punched the Nara heir through a wall for the "granny" comment.

"Now see here, Shikamaru," the Sannin said firmly, waving one of the inter-country ninja newspapers in the general direction of his pineapple-shaped head, "Wind Country's Jinchuuriki – the one from Sand that went crazy at the chuunin exams a few years back – he's escaped from the Penitentiary and is heading west through Fire, pretty much along the same trail that we'll be taking to Rice, meaning that there's a very good chance we'll cross paths. You know that Konohamaru and Moegi's parents would kill you if they knew about this."

"Konohamaru's an orphan, and Moegi's parents are civilian; why would they be reading a shinobi newspaper?"

"Way to be insensitive."

Shikamaru had not even looked up from the book he was reading, so Tsunade whirled around to face Ino, who had volunteered to go with them. Both of the younger ninja were wearing their uniforms and forehead protectors, in direct contrast to Tsunade's kimono top and pants, and the Yamanaka was sitting on the porch of the Nara Clan complex, feeding preserved apricots to her late team-leader's child. "Konohamaru and Moegi have been to Rice before," the Sannin said, "We should take them somewhere else for a change so they can get to know other parts of the world. They've never been to the Hot Spring Village."

Ino didn't seem to hear her, but Konohamaru did; "If you don't want to go to Rice, why doncha stay at home?" He and Moegi, his teammate, were reading some amusing jutsu scrolls that Naruto had made for them.

"She wouldn't stay at home because Shizune would try to hide the sake again," the female Academy student commented without raising her head.

"And what would you do if the Jinchuuriki caught you?" Tsunade asked, lifting an eyebrow in semi-amusement.

"Catch him off guard with the Sexy Jutsu and knock him out," declared Konohamaru confidently, thumping himself on the chest before returning to his scroll.

"She wouldn't stay at home unless Shizune was willing to let her gamble at the casinos in the civilian districts, where as she's free to do whatever she wants if she comes with us," Moegi added on to her earlier comment.

The Sannin snorted. "Already forgotten that I used to be Hokage, huh, brats?"

Both visibly flinched and said nothing further.

* * *

Tsunade was the first one at the gate the next morning, ready to go. She had packed light for her (which still meant that no ordinary shinobi could lift her backpack, much less carry it), and TonTon, Shizune's pet pig, was curled up contentedly in her arms.

She still was not quite sure how her assistant had managed to frisk the animal off on her.

The group departed an hour late; it seemed that Shikamaru had picked up some of Kakashi's lackadaisical attitudes regarding appointments, despite the fact that the older ninja was not his team leader. They traveled the ninja way, through the treetops, though their pace was slower to account for the presence of Moegi and Konohamaru. It was a good day to be heading out, not too hot or humid yet but neither was it too cold, but that meant that they were several times more likely to run into trouble on the road in the form of bandits, maybe even the Akatsuki.

Tsunade really, really hoped that it would be the former.

They passed several monuments on the way, including the Valley of the End, where the First Hokage and Uchiha Madara had their epic battle decades earlier. The statues of the two great men were still there, still massive, and still utterly imposing as they loomed over the group of travelers, stone faces impassive and worn.

Konohamaru was not impressed. "Let's head through this place fast so we don't have to look at it much."

"You really should be a little bit more circumspect, Konohamaru," Tsunade said, pointedly sitting down on a rock as Shikamaru called a twenty-minute lunch break, "If the First hadn't won that fight, the Konoha you know would likely not exist – and neither would you, or any of us."

The student scoffed and made as if to argue that the Uchiha taking over wouldn't have changed things that much, but Moegi called to him so they could switch the scrolls that they were reading and chow down on their sandwiches. The former Hokage snorted to herself at the ease at with the two youngest got distracted, doing a quick sweep of her surroundings to make sure there were no threats in the immediate vicinity before she, too, opened the meal she had packed. It consisted of a peanut butter sandwich and a large bottle of sake, which she did not let the younger two stick a message in and toss it in the waters of the lake.

Shikamaru didn't eat; he found a relatively flat rock and stared up at the clouds like he usually did on days like this, absentmindedly trying to guess what their shapes reminded him of while Ino changed the baby's diapers and fed him again.

A fight broke out between Moegi and Konohamaru but the two Academy students refused to tell the adults exactly what had caused the altercation, so in order to keep them quiet, Tsunade regaled them with tales of the damage that Jiraiya had received when he was inevitably caught peeping at the women's bathhouse, injuries that the female Sannin usually wound up healing if he managed to drag himself to the hospital during her shift – and provided, of course, that she was not the one who caused the damage.

The group stopped at a crossroads for lunch, only to see a pair of familiar faces; old man Ichiraku and his daughter Ayame were expanding their ramen stand business and setting up a second store there, supervising the new hires. The adults got a reprieve from the now near-constant bickering of the younger ninjas as they conversed with the two civilians, and for being regular patrons of the original stand back in Konoha, they also received free meals out of the deal. They promised to pass word around about the stand at the crossroads; they were sure Naruto would want to stop by every time he left the village on a mission.

Tsunade spoke briefly with Ayame about the escaped Jinchuuriki before the group headed off again; both women were of the opinion that inevitably someone, somewhere would run afoul of the crazy tailed-beast carrier, which would end very, very badly for that person.

The afternoon in Fire was nothing like that morning; it was hot, humid, muggy, and all around uncomfortable, and the ninja let their bodies run while their minds wandered. The Fifth Hokage remembered a wonderful mansion that she had visited in the area, a truly beautiful place with tall columns and a wide drive, and she knew exactly how to get there from where they were. She knew that Shikamaru would simply say that it was too troublesome to stop and peer around an old house, but as the day wore on, the desire to see the old mansion grew to the point where she said, "I remember while I was staying there, the owner of the house told me that his ninja ancestors had hidden all of their family's valuables inside a secret room in the house when Uchiha Madara and the First Hokage fought in the Valley of the End; the fighting was so bad that all the nearby villages feared destruction. However, the nin were bystander casualties in the fight, and the valuables were never found…"

"No way!" Konohamaru shouted, almost missing landing on the next branch in his excitement, "Hey! We're better ninja than those pansies! Let's find the secret room ourselves!" Moegi joined in the demanding, and Ino rolled her eyes while Shikamaru murmured, "How troublesome," at the sky. Finally, the whining got to them, and they turned off on a side path, the canopy swiftly becoming too thick for them to travel through it, forcing them to drop to the ground and travel on foot. This slowed their pace only a little, as the forest floor was clear enough for them to run, and the children took to debating exactly where they thought the treasure would be hiding based on Tsunade's description of the mansion –

And then TonTon reacted to something none of them could see or sense, leaping from Tsunade's arms to solidly headbutt Shikamaru between the shoulder blades; the nin was not expecting the sudden assault, and the forward momentum caused him to slam headfirst into a tree before he could catch himself. The pig was running around in a panic, evading the women and children trying to catch it and furiously fighting them off when they got close; clearly it was confused about something.

The ground beneath it suddenly turned to sand, holding it in place and enabling Tsunade to pick it up and try to soothe it as the group turned to see who had come to help them. There were three Sand ninja jogging up in front of them, coming from the general direction of their home country, two male and one female. They wore the traditional garb of their home country, primarily desert-oriented, focused on keeping both heat and sand out and away from them, and each carried something in a backsling: a wrapped puppet for the tallest of males, a gourd for the shortest, and a large fan for the female.

All three of them were exceedingly familiar; Tsunade was certain that she had seen them somewhere before, though it was taking a moment for the mental rolodex to come around. Shikamaru was conversing with the female while Ino healed his bruised back under Tsunade's watchful eye, and Konohamaru and Moegi watched in amazement, jabbering amongst themselves. The Sannin saw the shortest male's jaw clench in irritation at the constant chatter, and then it clicked. The short temper, control over sand; all of these things were the listed characteristics from the newspaper she'd been reading. "You're the Jinchuuriki from the Sand Village."

The young man turned to face her properly and did not even attempt to deny it; Shikamaru muttered, "How troublesome." The two ninja with the Jinchuuriki visibly tensed, unsettled, unhappy at being recognized, but the Jinchuuriki did nothing threatening – for the moment. "Why is the Kazekage's son a Jinchuuriki?" the Sannin asked, hoping to buy Shikamaru time to get them out of there; he wasn't called the smartest ninja in Fire Country for nothing.

"Before I was born, Wind's daimyo decided to decrease the number of ninja in the Sand Village," said the beast-carrier, Gaara of the Desert, "and so my father decided that quality should exceed quantity. He revived an old weapon of war called the Shukaku and made the mistake of sealing it inside of me, forcing my mother to pay the ultimate price because of it." None of the Leaf ninja seemed to notice the sand slowly creeping up Shikamaru and Konohamaru's forms, although the genius probably did. He said nothing, however, probably too busy thinking of a way to get them out of the mess they had tumbled in to. "I grew up isolated from my village because of the circumstances of my birth, because of Shukaku's influence, and eventually my father ordered my kill because I was too unstable to be of any use to him." Gaara's teal eyes locked with Tsunade's. "I killed all of the assassins he sent after me, including my uncle Yashamaru."

That caught their attention; this boy had murdered his own uncle? The Sannin whispered, "You poor thing," under her breath.

The sand kept on creeping, beginning to crush Shikamaru – who was struggling but gagged with the sand – and Konohamaru – who was in shock. More of the fine grains were wrapping around Ino and Moegi's ankles, anchoring them to the ground to prevent them from escaping.

"None of them could touch me because of my sand," Gaara went on, ignoring the other nin as if they weren't there, Shikamaru's struggles slowing, then ceasing altogether, "and finally my father himself tried to kill me. I got to him first." The sand retreated from the two males' bodies, leaving them limp on the ground in favor of the women. Ino, too, began to fight, but the sand clenched around her legs, pinning her in place, and plunged down her throat to silence her before she could call out, cutting off her airway.

"They put me in the Penitentiary because of that, but they knew it wouldn't hold me forever; they just needed enough time to find a way to extract Shukaku, but they weren't fast enough."

"Surely someone could help you," Tsunade said, "Place a few extra seals to help keep you separate from the beast?" TonTon leapt from her arms and took off running, no longer able to stand being around the strange boy with heavy fatigue marks around his eyes.

"People offered, but I wouldn't let them." The sand finished crushing and strangling the two younger women, retreating from the corpses to swirl around the Sannin's feet, passive – for now, but ever threatening. "I didn't want anyone tampering with me further, not after what they've already done."

"You poor thing." She reached out, as if to hug him, but the Jinchuuriki didn't realize that she was not being hostile; his hand came up, the sand with it, and in moments it covered Tsunade and bore down with incredible pressure, crushing her too fast for her to react. He watched her body fall, the faintest hint of something like sadness visible on his face before it was gone, disappearing as he turned away from the bodies.

"Let's go."

"Shouldn't we hide the bodies?" the puppet-carrier asked, making as if to roll the corpses off the path.

"Shut up or I'll kill you. Let's go."


End file.
